It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been b...rought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellen...t man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If we confine ourselves to a general and distant reflection on the ills of human life, that can have no effect to prepare us for t...hem. If by close and intense meditation we render them present and intimate to us, that is the true secret for poisoning all our pleasures, and rendering us perpetually miserable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

It seemed there was a sort of poisoning, an auto-infection of the organisms, so Dr. Krokowski said; it was caused by the disintegr...ation of a substance ... and the products of this disintegration operated like an intoxicant upon the nerve-centres of the spinal cord, with an effect similar to that of certain poisons, such as morphia, or cocaine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of hum...anity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »